LEGO Techniques - Stuff it, Horse!

This is a guest post by DagsBricks reader Greentree.  Greentree contacted me after reading about how I got 384 1x2 bricks in a small PaB cup.  She was also inspired by these photos.  Since horses were now on the wall, I was encouraged to do a blog post about stuffing horses into a cup.  I posited the following theories with no horses on hand:

"According to BL, it will sell for around $3 each in better than 6 months time.  The horse is 2 bricks wide and I guarantee 2 could fit flat in the bottom of a small cup.  Perhaps the legs would be intertwined a little.  Based on the 2 brick width, I could probably stack the horses 4 high.  So that's about 8 horses in the cup for a resale of $24 on a $9 cup.

The biggest cup has a smaller diameter base.  I don't think you could lay 2 horses (or even one horse) flat in there.  But I have no doubt that you could slide them in upright fitting at least two in the bottom.  Then I imagine you could slide 4 in the next layer.  By that time the cup diameter could be big enough to lay a couple flat.  So lots more room for other pieces but still the same number of horses."

Later that day...

"My friend rushed to our local store, and in a hurried 30 minutes before work, was able to get 14 horses each in two cups.  After he came home, the two of us combined techniques and were able to get 20 horses in a cup with the lid firmly on. 😁

I will admit, I used your idea of laying the horses flat. 😉 We also tucked the heads and legs in tightly to bundle each horse as small as possible.

The second photo shows the key technique we found to start: 4 horses stacked to match the curve of the cup (only showing 3 in the pic stack), and two horses head down standing upright. That's because there is the "stud" in the bottom of the cup, and so my friend found by inverting the two horses so their heads were in the trough, we then had a flat bundle in the narrow bottom of the cup.

The next two layers have a stack with 3 horses on the side, and another 3 flipped and stacked opposite them; this puts the horses so their backs are to the side of the cup. There is then room to place one horse upright in a resulting space that creates a "V".  So 6 horses in the bottom layer, and 7 each in the next two layers = 20.

Anyway, I am very sorry your store is limiting customers to 5 horses, and you yourself cannot have the fun of trying, let alone get some inexpensive stock for your store. Oh, and I still doubt that one guys claim of 19, because we can see so many of the horse inverted. Trying to put them in like that we were only able to get about 15 in the cup. *shrug* Who knows.

We are going back to our store on Sunday, to see if we can increase our haul to 40 horses in two cups. We're doing it just for the puzzle challenge of course. 😊"

I was all set to go and try it for myself but then I read that my local LEGO store was limiting customers to 5 horses.  I could have gone, stuffed, taken photos, and emptied the cup, but what would have been the point if I couldn't have taken them home?  YMMV at your local store.  The irony is, if they are limiting horses then there will probably still be stock in the bin, however you will not be able to use this method and bring them all home.

All thanks to Greentree and her friend for testing the horse in the cup and reporting in.